finding duplicate records with typo's

can someone tell me (or point me in the right direction) of what the right way of finding duplicates in dirty data (caused by typo's) ?

is there something like a 'hashing' or 'rating' of text that will give you a number that you can compare ?

for example

hash( "hello") => 4323
hash( "helo") =>  4334
hash("tree")  => 7326

i'm not sure what direction i should look in, this is just an idea that i had, but any idea's are very welcome.

thanks,
tom Received on Mon Aug 06 2007 - 03:13:57 CEST